


magnets pulling from different poles (with no control)

by citadelofswords



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Transistor AU, and also for crisis core and the remake but the transistor spoilers are the big ones, cloud is autistic because i'm autistic, ostensibly remake compliant but waves hands, spoilers for the end of transistor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24806065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: What Cloud wants to do is get the fuck off this mountain as quickly as possible, and get somewhere safe. But as he starts to straighten, he hesitates, staring down at Zack’s bloody, lifeless body, and the sword that seems to now hold Zack’s soul in it.“Well,” Zack says, clearly trying to sound upbeat. “You’re in one piece, at least. And awake! That’s what really matters.” His voice turns rueful. “Don’t really know how we’re gonna get out of this one.”(in which Zack is the sword boyfriend, Cloud gets with the program way sooner, and Midgar can't catch a break.)
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Comments: 9
Kudos: 158





	magnets pulling from different poles (with no control)

**Author's Note:**

> welcome back to "mk writes the saddest thing they can imagine for first fic in a fandom" except i couldn't actually make it that sad because canon is sad enough already, i'm over it.
> 
> this was inspired by a [great gifset](https://sovahunter.tumblr.com/post/175756017284/final-fantasy-vii-transistor-inspired) which was in turn inspired by [someone else](https://zacksoldiers.tumblr.com/) and unfortunately once it got stuck in my head i wrote it in two days, showed it to my girlfriend, and posted it.
> 
> there's a lot of character death in this one but **spoiler alert** none of it sticks, hence no major character death tag. folks who haven't played transistor: this includes an instance of suicide. that also doesn't stick. transistor fans are looking at me like how are you gonna write an au with no permanent character death and claim spoilers for the end of transistor to which i say, you'll see.
> 
> i do a lot of handwaving of ff7 canon in this one, please forgive me.
> 
> title from paper boats by darren korb and ashley barrett from the transistor soundtrack.

Cloud has been awake for all of five minutes and he thinks he’d very much like to go back to being catatonic now.

There had been one beautiful, blissful moment when Cloud had first opened his eyes and seen Zack standing over him, where he thought everything would finally be okay. And then thunder crashed, and Zack took his own sword to the gut stopping someone from stabbing Cloud, and Cloud watched him die.

After all that work. That whole year where Cloud couldn’t say a word to him, couldn’t even lift his hands to sign words at him— snatched away in one brilliant act of self-sacrifice.

Cloud’s hunched over, arms wrapped around his chest, shaking with the force of his sobs, when a voice breaks through his grief, startled and confused. “Cloud?!”

Cloud looks up sharply, wondering what tricks his mind is playing on him now that he’s hearing Zack’s voice mere minutes after he died in Cloud’s arms. The buster sword, still impaling Zack in the chest, is glowing slightly. Or the Materia is, anyway. Pulsing a faint blue, just the shade of Zack’s eyes.

“Cloud,” Zack says, and he sounds near frantic. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Be okay. Come on, please be okay. I’m here, I’m right here. I’m… still here. Just stuck. Stuck here. Wow. This sucks.” With every word the Materia pulses brighter.

 _I’m here_ , Cloud wants to say, but when he opens his mouth no words come out. Oh, he can vocalize (unless that scream was the punchline to a big cosmic joke— the last thing Cloud ever expresses is his anguish) but he can’t speak. Trembling, he raises his hands. <I’m here. No thanks to you.> He lays a hand on Zack’s chest, reaching around the sword so awkwardly.

“Oh, I wish I could feel that.” Zack says— Zack _says_ , he just watched Zack die two minutes ago and now he’s speaking like it was nothing but a minor inconvenience. “Or hear your voice again. I mean, I’m sure I could hear you. I can see you, from where I seem to be stuck inside my own sword, and I can hear the rain. Oh, hells, that means Hojo stole your voice in the lab.” Zack growls. “Do me a favor and stab him with me if you run into him.”

Cloud desperately wants to avoid that if at all possible. What he wants to do is get the fuck off this mountain as quickly as possible, and get somewhere safe. But as he starts to straighten, he hesitates, staring down at Zack’s bloody, lifeless body, and the sword that seems to now hold Zack’s soul in it.

“Well,” Zack says, clearly trying to sound upbeat. “You’re in one piece, at least. And awake! That’s what really matters.” His voice turns rueful. “Don’t really know how we’re gonna get out of this one.”

Cloud stares at his hands, and then reaches for the handle of the Buster and drags it, slowly, from Zack’s body. “Okay, that’s something,” Zack said. “Looks like you got me out of _that_. Though I guess I can’t really move for myself anymore. Wow, how the tables have turned, huh?”

Cloud tries to laugh and it comes out as a silent sob, instead.

“Hey, no,” Zack whispers, gentle and sure. “I’m right here, Cloud. I know it looks— really bad. But I’m with you still. Sure, it’s a little unconventional, but I’ve got your back, just like always.” He hesitates, and then says, “We need to get the hell out of here.”

Cloud nods, and then shivers. The rain is still pounding around them, and he’s drenched through. They didn’t have much of anything, in the time they were gone, but Zack’s still wearing parts of his SOLDIER armor. If he’s gonna be lugging around this fucking sword, he’s going to need all the help he can get.

His fingers are clumsy with the buckles, but he manages to get them undone and drapes them carefully over his shoulders. Not for the first time, he wishes one of them had some kind of jacket, or his old scarf, or something, but this will have to do for now.

As an afterthought, he reaches out and closes Zack’s eyes. He feels somewhat better having done that. 

Zack doesn’t say anything the whole time Cloud works, not until Cloud hoists the sword up so he’s almost hugging it. “There we go,” Zack says, warm. “Together again. Well… sort of.” There’s a strange little noise, like he’s trying to laugh.

The Buster sword is pretty heavy for someone who only just woke up from year-long Mako poisoning, even if he does have a SOLDIER’s strength now, so he ends up dragging it behind him as he stumbles away.

One of the fuckers who attacked them came on a bike, and Cloud tips it back upright, and then hesitates. It’s a struggle to balance both the sword and the bike without holding either of them with his hands, but he manages to do it long enough to ask, <How much can you actually see?>

“Pretty much what’s right around me,” Zack says, cheerfully. “It’s kinda hard to explain. I can try on the way. Where are we gonna go?”

There’s no going back, not really. Cloud can’t even guarantee they’ll be safe in Midgar, but they both know people there at least. It’ll be something. So he points to the huge structure on the horizon.

“Cool,” Zack says. “Same plan as before then. Just, uh, a little different of an execution. Listen, maybe if we go talk to Aerith first she’ll have an idea what happened to me.”

Cloud looks over his shoulder at Zack’s body, still slumped and covered in blood, and shudders. “Nuh-uh, you’re not bringing that with you,” Zack says, firm. “No room on the bike for a dead body. ‘Sides, I’m not there. I’m right here.”

Cloud closes his eyes and nods once, carefully lifting the sword over his shoulder. He’s only a little surprised at how easily it fits against his back, nestled along his spine like it’s truly Zack back there. Though part of that might be Zack’s armor, just the one piece of it— not enough to mark him as SOLDIER but enough to keep Zack close and immediately at hand.

“Okay,” Zack says cheerfully, and his voice just sounds like he’s got his chin hooked over Cloud’s shoulder, not like it’s coming from a fucking sword strapped to Cloud’s back. “Let’s go!”

* * *

Cloud has to get used to balancing on a bike again, and he’s sort of ashamed to admit he almost crashes the bike twice on the way down the mountain. But Zack, thankfully, doesn’t say anything, even though he’s probably vibrating with the wish to tease.

It’s unnatural. Cloud wishes he could ask him.

Zack doesn’t speak until Cloud’s found his balance and they’re speeding down an open stretch of road, Midgar growing steadily larger by the second. “You know,” he says. “I had this great idea, once upon a time. When we were in Niflheim. You and me, we’d just… skip town. Leave SOLDIER behind. Maybe we coulda taken your friend Tifa with us. Thought we’d just, skip the left turn back to HQ, swing by Sector Five and get Aerith. And then… I dunno. Go somewhere no one would look for us.” Cloud’s throat closes up. “That was before everything happened though. And then, Hojo.” Zack sighs. “He stole your voice, Cloud. And I don’t even know what else. I’m so sorry.”

 _It’s not your fault_ , Cloud thinks, and resolves to tell Zack as much later.

“Look, I don’t— I don’t know what you’re thinking we’ll do. I know what I’d do, but I’m kinda beholden to you now. Which, thank you for the lift, by the way. Whatever it is, do me a favor?” Cloud looks behind him, like he’s expecting to see Zack’s face behind him again. “Don’t let me go.”

That, Cloud is sure he can do.

* * *

Midgar is silent when Cloud gets off the bike, sword strapped to his back. A little too quiet.

Cloud looks at the bike and leaves it there. It doesn’t matter anymore. He shouldn’t need it. Already he’s feeling stronger, how he was before the lab and even better than that. He could probably circle the whole city and, yeah, it might take him a while, but he’d feel okay after.

He’s not really thinking about that though. He’s thinking about how quiet it is.

“I don’t like this,” Zack murmurs. “Where are all the people?”

Frowning, Cloud pulls the sword off his back again. It’s better now, to carry it, but he still ends up dragging it behind him.

When the first thing comes out of the ground, he almost forgets how to use a sword, almost drops it and tries to reach for a gun he no longer has. It’s only Zack’s yell of surprise that reminds him he should probably swing.

Cloud never trained with swords this big, and he definitely never trained against creatures of smoke and static, glowing faintly round the edges like they’ve also been left in mako too long. But it’s pretty easy to get used to the motions, like he’s been doing this for as long as Zack had. What’s difficult to get used to is the way the sword seems to move, sometimes, like it can operate on its own power. And what startles Cloud into freezing entirely is the way there’s a miniature explosion as he slices through the last of the specters, knocking him back a couple feet.

“Cloud!” Zack says. “Did you see that! Wow! I didn’t realize I could do that!”

 _Neither did I,_ Cloud thinks to himself, but he doesn’t do anything except gather the sword close to his chest, resting his forehead against the hilt gently.

“I’m cool, Cloud. Doesn’t hurt at all. Trust me. You’re good too, right?” He nods. “Good. Okay, can you kinda, point me towards the paths? If I can orient myself, I can probably get us to where I’m pretty sure Aerith will be.”

Cloud nods, once, and presses the tip of the sword into the ground. Zack hums a little, an old song Cloud only remembers from their year running from Shinra, and says, “Okay, looks like we came in on the borders of Seven and Six, so we should be able to edge around Wall Market without any huge fuss, s’long as you keep your head down and I keep my mouth shut.”

That’s really the last thing Cloud wants, but he knows it’s true. Even far outside of Midgar as he spent his time he knows the reputation Wall Market has. His curiosity can be saved for a day when he’s not voiceless and carrying his best friend who’s now a sword.

With a careful swing he hooks Zack back onto his back and starts in the direction Zack directs him, weaving through the edges of Sector Seven to the gate that divides it from Six. It’s strange that there’s _no one_ , and Zack remarks on the lack of kids once before remembering he’d said he wasn’t gonna talk.

They find more of the eerie mako-glowing wraiths, and Cloud dispatches them easily, along with strange robotics that form from the junk on the ground. On a notice board they pass is an old peeling poster for Avalanche, an old mercenary group after the benefit of the Planet, spattered with blood; other notice boards in the area seem to have fared much worse.

The gate is just in sight when Zack draws in a sharp breath and says, “Cloud. Over there.”

 _Where,_ Cloud thinks, sardonic, just as Zack amends, “In that alley, to your right. Something’s glowing— feels kind of like it’s calling me. Can you?”

It’s barely five cautious steps before Cloud and Zack both suck in a breath at the same time. The figure crumpled on the ground was probably, once, a person, but she’s nearly unrecognizable now, with all the blood and the wounds. Her eyes are nearly black with a ring of green around the edges, where they gaze up sightlessly. Cloud wants to be sick— she’s no older than Tifa would be, at this point in their lives. Probably younger.

He’s selfishly glad it’s not Tifa.

“Hey there,” Zack says softly. “You’re still lingering, huh. Not gone back to the Planet yet.” With a jolt Cloud realizes he’s talking to the dead girl— or maybe to the glow that’s hanging just above her body, pulsing gently. “Oh, you wanna come along with me? Okay. Sure. We don’t really know how it works either— hey, Cloud, can you just kinda hold me out? Yeah, like that.”

The glow dissipates into the Buster sword. A new materia forms, green and glowing with a soothing light. The glow in the figure’s eyes fades, eyes falling shut as her body crumbles to ash and blows away.

“Poor girl,” Zack mutters. “There wasn’t much of her left. Just a trace. Said the thing that got her didn’t feel as much like a bang as a whisper.”

Cloud sighs and slings Zack back over his back. They’re wasting so much time.

* * *

At the gate he finds another surprise— a mural, of Zack, painted onto the brick in colors that were clearly once vibrant but are now faded and peeling. He’s wearing a crown of lilies, and his face is almost level to Cloud’s, when he pauses in front of it.

He doesn’t look much like the Zack on the propaganda posters. He looks more like the Zack Cloud knows, that soft smile reserved just for the people he really loved. Slowly, he reaches out to touch it.

“Hey,” Zack says, quietly. Cloud aches for the hand on his shoulder turning him away from the facsimile of his best friend, aches to be pulled into a warm embrace that he could finally, finally return, but nothing comes. “That ain’t me anymore, buddy. Come on. Let’s keep going.”

Cloud doesn’t go— just stares up at the mural, willing the smile to be committed to memory.

“Cloud. Please, just turn around.”

He presses his fingers to his lips and touches the wall before doing as Zack asked, turning away and walking through the gate to Sector Six.

There’s no one to catch the tear that slides down his face.

* * *

Sector Six is worse than Seven was, because Cloud knows Wall Market is supposed to be more lively than this, but it’s a fucking ghost town. Cloud has half a mind to see if the trains are running, but it’s not like he has an ID to make it through those checkpoints.

“Once we get Aerith we should go up to the Plate,” Zack muses, as they rip through another one of those Whispers. “Maybe we’ll be able to see the whole of Midgar from there. See if the whole place is like this.”

Cloud has a bad feeling that it is. They’ve found another few bodies, another few last streams of life that wrap around the Buster sword. He’s got enough new Materia to swap them out if he likes, but he refuses to touch the blue one in case it results in Zack’s voice going silent. Much as he has days where he can hardly bear any noise, where even his own voice is so grating he turns to sign to express himself, Zack’s was never like that. 

Six is crumbling around them as they watch. Every Whisper that Cloud runs through takes out more of the buildings, and though the slums are already half-decimated from the plate collapse Cloud still hates to watch it all fall. When they pass through an old playground Zack goes quiet enough that Cloud pushes through without engaging any of the Whispers, hoping to leave everything intact.

“There,” Zack says, as they cross into Sector Five. “That’s where she’d be. That church.” It’s crumbling along the top, a huge hole in its ceiling that’s not been patched up. Cloud raises an eyebrow directly at the sword and Zack laughs uncomfortably. “I uh, told you we met when I fell out of the Reactor into her church, right?”

Cloud laughs, once, silent, and he can almost hear how Zack beams in triumph.

“Come on!” he says. “We’re almost—,”

His voice cuts out so suddenly Cloud whirls around, afraid he’s lost him, that the Materia holding Zack’s last traces has finally winked out, but it’s still glowing. There’s a hitching breath, and then Zack breathes, “No. No, no no. No, not her.”

Fear grips Cloud’s heart, and his head swings in all directions before falling on another crumpled figure, with that telltale glow. Cloud approaches, already drawing the sword and preparing for another figure along for the ride, when Zack lets out a heart-rending _scream_ so terrible Cloud stumbles back a step or two.

Cloud wants to ask if he’s okay, but he doesn’t have a voice. Instead he gathers the Buster sword close to his chest, taking care with the sharp edges, and tentatively moves closer.

The woman isn’t his or Zack’s age, so unless Zack was dating a much older woman it can’t be Aerith. Blonde hair pulled back and a green dress, she looks almost… motherly. Or at least, what’s left of her does. Shuddering, Cloud holds out the sword just enough to pull her in, and then pulls the sword back close to his chest.

 _I’m here,_ he wants to say, but he can’t. So he just leans his head against the hilt and closes his eyes, hoping it’s enough.

Zack doesn’t say anything else until they reach the church doors— hanging open, broken beyond belief— and Cloud’s stepped inside. “That was Elmyra,” he says, soft, subdued. “Aerith’s mother. She— I don’t understand. What’s doing this?”

Cloud props the sword up on one of the only standing pews and kneels at the edge of a blooming field of lilies. <Did she say anything about Aerith?> He spells out her name carefully, trying to remember all the signs for the letters.

“She didn’t say anything to me. I don’t think there was enough of her left to really make an impact.” Zack makes a frustrated sound. “This doesn’t make any sense, Cloud. Me, these Whispers, the emptiness of the Sectors— it’s crumbling. All of it. This is the only place that looks _intact._ ”

Cloud touches the edge of a lily. It’s blooming, a last spark of contentment in a world slowly losing all its color. Somehow still alive even as everything dies. <So, what do we do?>

Zack sighs. “Let’s take a break,” he admits. “I’m sure Aerith won’t mind if we spend the night. This is a sanctuary, after all. Then… we can figure out what to do. Where to go.”

<We’re not going to wait for her?>

“I don’t think she’s here.” Zack sounds so defeated that Cloud can’t help but rise, reach out, take the sword into his hands again. “I think we’re on our own with this. And more than anything— I want to know what’s happening. I need to. Even if we can’t fix it, there’s just— my brain is buzzing from all the bad things it could be, and I need to know that it isn’t any of them.”

Cloud nods. In lieu of responding, since his hands are full, he carefully steps into the flowerbed. “Hey,” Zack says, “don’t crush her flowers. Or maybe do, cause that’ll summon her.”

There are memories— dim, fuzzy memories, as though from a half-remembered dream— of Zack curling around Cloud on lonely nights, holding him close, shielding him from the outside world. There are even vaguer memories of a hand brushing through his hair and lips pressed to his forehead. Zack has no hair and no forehead, but Cloud curls around the huge sword and presses his lips to cold metal anyway.

“Oh,” Zack murmurs. “Wish I could feel that too.”

* * *

Cloud doesn’t expect to dream while he’s asleep, but he does anyway. A woman kneels in the flower bed, carefully shifting the lilies around his body, and when he sits up she startles. “Oh!”

He furrows his brows at her. Even in a dream his voice doesn’t work, so he holds his hands up. <Aerith?>

She stares at him with wide eyes that slowly, alarmingly, fill with tears. “Oh, Cloud,” she whispers. “It’s all gone so horribly wrong, hasn’t it?”

He just blinks at her in confusion. She knows him? But they’ve never met before. Unless Zack talked enough about him that she can recognize him on sight. His hands ask her a different question. <Wrong?>

“I have a bad feeling that events weren’t supposed to transpire the way they did for you,” Aerith murmurs. She reaches out and touches his face, her hands soothing as they brush under one of his eyes. “Fate has, ah, a little bit of a conniption when things don’t go according to plan. Trust me.” Her eyes smile sadly at him. “I’ve seen it before.”

<What do we do?>

“Keep going,” Aerith says. “Zack will keep you safe. I’ll try to see if I can find a solution so you don’t get stuck there. No one deserves to be alone. Especially not you.”

Cloud’s hands tighten into fists, but before he can say anything else he hears Zack’s voice softly calling his name, and Aerith nods once with a bright smile before reaching up to touch her braid. “Here,” she says. “I think I still had this in this world.”

When Cloud does wake up it’s like Aerith, and the patch of sunshine she was in, have just faded to nothing around him. He’s still lying in the flowerbed, still holding the sword, but in one hand is gripped a Materia, pulsing softly like a heartbeat.

“Hey,” Zack says. “It’s… probably morning. Did you sleep okay?”

<Slept enough last year,> Cloud jokes, and even though he worries Zack won't find it funny he laughs. With a careful hand Cloud slips the Materia Aerith gave him into the pocket of his jeans, where it nestles with the other Materias not currently resting in the sword.

“Let’s see if we can find one of those Shinra terminals,” Zack says. “Maybe they have an idea of what’s going on.”

 _Bastards_ , Cloud thinks, and slowly struggles up. His stomach growls uncomfortably at him, and Zack laughs.

“Maybe we raid Aerith’s fridge, too,” he amends, and Cloud snorts before slinging the sword over his back.

* * *

Finding a terminal in Five turns out to be harder than Cloud thought it would be, and he ends up on an abandoned train, several of the cars overturned, to pull one of their monitors. “Makes sense,” Zack muses, “that they wouldn’t want the ordinary folks to learn too much.”

Someone’s already hacked the monitors and left it open for them, so it doesn’t take much for Cloud to pull up a broadcast from President Shinra, urging for all citizens to remain indoors in order to avoid the wraiths.

There’s a population counter in the corner of the screen. Cloud blinks, and it drops.

“This is horrible,” Zack says. “Is it all the Whispers?”

Cloud slowly navigates through the terminal, following Zack’s instructions to break through some of the firewalls. A message pops up in the corner, and Cloud ignores it while he tries to hack into a security camera until, suddenly, his whole screen is filled with the message.

“Reeve?” Zack says, surprised. “What?”

It’s a short message, saying only, _There are certain things they don’t want you to see. The only thing that can help us now is to put the sword back in its rightful place, but I’m sure you won’t do that. So as long as you’re going to keep it, you may as well know what you’re up against._ Attached is a grainy photo, and it takes Cloud a moment to squint at it before he realizes what he’s looking at.

_No…_

Zack doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then he says, “Is that… is that Jenova?”

Cloud nods. He types into the return message box, _What have you done?_

Reeve doesn’t reply. Cloud growls and drops the terminal.

“Okay, okay,” Zack says, voice shaky. “So we’ve got Whispers _and_ Jenova to deal with. Awesome! Great!” He growls. “This is just getting better and better, huh.”

Cloud can’t help but agree. He picks up the terminal again, moves to the comments screen on the newscast, and types, _Why would they have taken Jenova out of Nibelheim?_

“I’ve got one guess, and it’s the guy who made our lives hell for four years,” Zack replies. “Maybe we will get to kill him after all.”

More than ever Cloud wants to turn back, wants to run away. But Zack wouldn’t leave this city, and so neither will he. His knuckles go white against the edges of the terminal as the population counter drops again. Not for the first time he hopes Tifa isn’t here, that she made it out. But the chances are looking slimmer and slimmer.

Hojo. Shinra. Cloud closes his eyes. Jenova. The Whispers are the one wrecking Midgar, but if not for Jenova— or, whatever it was Aerith said in her dream last night— they wouldn’t be here at all.

 _New plan,_ he types. _I’m going to get to the root of this. I’m going to find what’s caused this, and I’m going to break its heart._

After a moment of silence, Zack says, “That’s the Cloudy Sky I know and love.” He sounds approving, voice low and warm and rumbling. “All right. Let’s go.”

Cloud reaches up to touch the hilt of the Buster sword again, brushing his fingers gently across the Materia embedded there. Not for the first time, he wishes he had the words to express his feelings. At least this time, he has an excuse.

* * *

The Whispers are getting worse.

They’re starting to coalesce into figures that look less like wraiths and more like people, still glowing with the horrible mako like they bathed in it. Cloud swaps Materia between nearly every battle now, and even Zack’s gone mostly quiet with concentration.

They find Hojo at Reactor 1, and he crows about the success of his experiments, his son come back to his father, before transforming into a grotesque caricature of himself. It’s almost a mercy to drive the sword through his gut, watching the life and the mako leech out of him.

“Is it just me,” Zack says, once they’re sure he’s dead, “or did he kind of look like Sephiroth?”

Cloud grips Zack close to his chest again, eyes wide. Hojo did kind of look like Sephiroth. And now that he thinks about it, so do the Whispers.

Zack must come to the same conclusion, because he says, “We need to go right to the heart of this. Come on. Up to the Plate we go.”

Cloud steals another bike on his way out. Not like there’s anyone around to notice.

The walls of the expressway tunnel crumble around him. He expects falling stone, but it all just crumbles into ash around him, making him cough and wish he had driving goggles.

“It’s weird,” Zack says, finally. “It feels like I’m standing in a field of flowers, staring up at this sky. This gorgeous sunny sky. But it’s not a sky, not really. It’s just you. I can see you, and I know you can hear me.”

Cloud always heard Zack. His voice was in his head all through his training, first in SOLDIER and then in Shinra training. Egging him on, picking him up when it felt too hard, whenever there was a little voice in his head it had Zack’s bright tone and brilliant laughter. This whole past year has been Zack’s steady voice in his ear, drowning the buzzing with inane chatter, retelling old stories of his past exploits, begging him to wake up. Cloud doesn’t know how he could exist in a world where he couldn’t hear Zack.

“No matter what happens,” Zack says, softly. “I love you, Cloud. Sorry I never said it before. But I wanted to make sure you knew.”

It’s different from the way he usually says it. Cloud almost yanks the bike over, right there on the side of the road, to wrap his arms around the sword. To frantically sign it back, to tell him, even if he can’t use his words. But he doesn’t. He can’t. They have too much to do.

* * *

They find another terminal at the mouth of the expressway, and Cloud pulls over to take it. A news report declares President Shinra dead, and his son now in charge of the company.

Cloud just stares at it.

A message pops up. It’s from Reeve. _I couldn’t stop him. Rufus is next, I’m pretty sure. I’m going to explain everything before they get to us. I know you have no love in your heart for Shinra, and I don’t blame you. But the safety of the world depends on you reaching us before Jenova does._

Cloud isn’t sure he cares much about the world, but the population count is still at several thousand. Lower than it should be, but there are still innocent people living here. He’s not so heartless.

Shinra Tower looms over the upper plates of the city, glowing faintly with an eerie light. Cloud flicks through the other casts on the terminal, noting how the Sector 7 plate has collapsed, wrecking everything below it. Unclear how many survivors there are, but with the Whispers still roaming it’s impossible to tell. 

Midgar didn’t have much going for it by way of color, but anything it did have it’s lost by now. It would be tragic if it weren’t so stupid. This whole thing could have been prevented if Shinra hadn’t just been fucking around so much. Cloud drops the terminal and turns to stare up at the tower, hand on the hilt of the Buster sword.

He’s going to raze it all to the ground. For Tifa, and for Zack, and for himself. For everyone in this city who was lost.

“I don’t feel super great, Cloud,” Zack murmurs. “Like, fuzzy. Don’t worry though. Keep going.”

There’s a ping from the terminal, and Cloud peeks at it. There’s a message from an unknown frequency, and Cloud sees the exclamation points and knows it’s from Aerith. _Don’t forget the Materia I gave you! You’ll need it!_

Cloud touches his pocket, draws the sword, and sets off for the tower.

Zack stays mostly quiet, but with every Whisper they cut through his Materia dims just the tiniest bit more. His explosion still works at the same amount of power, but he doesn’t glow as brightly.

<Zack?> Cloud holds his name right up against his heart, unafraid of what it means now. Zack loves him. This is okay.

“Bad, Cloud.” It sounds like his voice is coming through a badly tuned radio in moments. “It’s fine. I’m still here, it’s just like a really bad headache. If I still had a head. Oh well, it’s just hard to keep my eyes open. Keep going. I’ll be okay. Gotta take out Jenova. The usual bullshit.”

Cloud nods. He keeps going.

By the time he’s reached the tower, Zack is completely silent. The glow in his Materia is completely gone. For the first time, Cloud reaches out and plucks it from the sword. He tucks it into his pocket, and retrieves the one he got from Aerith.

Worst case, he was wrong that the Materia is what holds Zack, and Zack is lost anyway. It makes him feel better, like he’s protecting Zack.

There’s a huge screen on the tower, broadcasting a message to all of Midgar. Cloud reads it. It details the Calamity, how Shinra trapped Jenova and experimented with its cells, believing it to be a Cetra. How Sephiroth was created with Jenova and mako, how SOLDIER was infused with raw mako to heighten their power. How Hojo, after the Nibelheim incident, captured the two survivors and experimented on them with Jenova.

Cloud has no doubts who those survivors are.

Reeve has detailed, leaving nothing out, how Shinra is responsible for the disaster that has befallen Midgar. Starting from thirty years ago and moving up to now— how Sephiroth’s resurgence and an “unknown incident” caused the Whispers to rise. An attempt at exposing them to mako instead corrupted them, and with every blow more of the city falls.

Cloud clutches Zack close to his chest. He feels kind of sick.

There’s a ping from a terminal nearby. Cloud goes to it. There are two new messages.

Reeve says, _So there you go. That’s everything. I’m only sorry I can’t right these wrongs myself. You’re on your own now. I’ll see you in the Promised Land._

Cloud replies, _I_ __’_ ll be there soon. _

The second message is from Aerith. _The Whispers rise when something acts against fate. Zack was never supposed to take that sword for you, Cloud. And I don’t want to imply that all of this is your fault, because it isn’t! This just happens sometimes. But I can fix it. Put things back to rights. All you need to do is have a little faith in the planet._

Cloud types back, _And Zack?_ He pauses, and then sends a second reply. _If this doesn’t end with me getting him out of his own sword I don’t want it._

 _I’ll see what I can do,_ Aerith promises, and the terminal goes dead.

* * *

Cloud is pretty sure the tower is supposed to be locked to anyone who isn’t a Shinra employee past a certain point, but the stairs let him through all the way to the top.

Reeve’s office is two floors down from the top, and Cloud steps inside to find his body, dead, against the desk. His skin is ghost pale, and there’s a slip of paper in his hand.

Cloud closes Reeve’s eyes. _Rest, Reeve,_ he thinks. _I’ll fix this._

He takes the paper and reads the words on it. He reads it again, mouthing along, eyebrows furrowed. It reads a little like a prayer, not that Cloud has much experience with those. 

A little faith in the Planet.

Cloud closes his eyes, touches the Materia Aerith gave him, and prays.

When he opens his eyes, the Materia is glowing green.

* * *

Jenova is a twisted monster when he finds it, half Sephiroth and half Rufus. It’s taken out nearly half of the roof as it towers high. Cloud’s never done this without Zack, but he thinks Aerith might be standing beside him, along with the Planet, which will have to do for now.

It screams when it sees him, a tiny human standing between it and raining havoc on the world, and it slithers down and rushes for him. Cloud lifts the sword and charges in. 

It takes everything in him. He barely has chances to swap Materias when they finally give out before Jenova strikes again, still clearly trying to finish whatever process he’d interrupted. He refuses to reinstate Zack’s Materia, goes through everything he has in the meantime until a gentle breeze ruffles his hair and a voice that sound suspiciously like Aerith’s whispers, “Holy.”

The world glows so brightly it knocks Cloud back, slamming him into the wall so hard he sees stars. Jenova screams again as Holy dismantles it, and Cloud screws up his eyes against the light, nearly as bright as the sun.

Soon enough though, it’s gone, the world fading back to normal. Or, almost normal. The entire roof of the tower is gone, but it barely looks as though it’s been torn away and more like it was just never there to begin with. A hand passes over Cloud’s hair, and then Aerith’s presence is gone. The Materia falls from the sword and rolls away.

It’s done.

There’s a soft sound like a groan. “Cloud?” Zack asks, voice rough as though he’d been asleep. “Cloud, what’s going on?”

Relief pours through Cloud and he clutches Zack close to him. pressing his lips to the hilt. “ _I’m okay_ ,” he mouths, against the metal.

“It’s done?” Zack asks, and Cloud nods. “Hey! Look at you, saving the Planet!” Cloud nods again. “And you’re all in one piece?” Cloud’s banged and bruised and cut up and there’s definitely blood on his face again, but he’s fine.

He’s alive.

Zack is still chattering away, about Jenova and Sephiroth and things that happened before Nibelheim, but Cloud isn’t listening. He looks up, to the terminal on the wall. It’s fuzzing in and out, staticked. The population counter in the corner just shows **One**.

That hurts more than Cloud expected it would. That’s everyone in the city, gone. If Tifa was here, she's gone now too. It's just him and Zack, who's a sword.

If his mind wasn’t made up before on what to do, it is now.

Slowly, he struggles to his feet, and sets back off down the stairs. Already the mako in his body is repairing some of the damage, but it doesn’t matter now. He has to fix this. Put it right. If all else fails, at least he and Zack will be together in the Lifestream.

He finds the bike at the edge of the plate, kicks it up. Zack is asking him questions about what he’s going to do now, where he’s going to go. He doesn’t answer them. Just drives.

As he passes the church, he pauses to pluck a lily from Aerith’s flowerbed. He drives back through the gate to Six, past the mural of Zack, past the park which lays in ruins. There’s barely any room in Seven left to navigate but he finds the throughways, breaks out of Midgar, leaves it behind him.

“Hey, Cloud,” Zack says. “Where are we going now?”

Cloud is saved from having to answer by keeping both hands on the bike. The world around them is flat and lifeless. There’s no saving it now.

Where else was decimated, besides Midgar?

Cloud parks the bike at the base of the mountain. The lily is tucked into his buttonhole and he stumbles a little, past the site of Zack’s last stand.

“What are we doing here?” Zack asks, softly. “I don’t really want to see it again. Don’t want to see me again. Hey, Cloud—,”

Cloud ignores him. Picks around the bodies, still left on the dusty ground, to where he left Zack propped up against a rock. Stands there, looking over him.

Has it really only been two days?

“Hey,” Zack says. “I’m still not there. I’m here. I’m alive. What are you doing, Cloud? Why’d you come back here?”

He plucks the lily from his chest and kneels, tucking it behind Zack’s ear. “A flower for reunited lovers,” Zack says, faintly. “But, Cloud—,”

Cloud sits down. Nestles up against Zack’s side. He’s only felt safer with the sword in his arms.

He takes a deep breath. Holds out his hand. The sword lifts.

“No!” Zack says, having finally figured it out. “No, no, Cloud, don’t you fucking dare! You’ll just be stuck here too, we can still go somewhere— see if there’s anything—,”

Cloud smiles. First one in a while. He holds his other hand to his heart, and then drops it to Zack’s thigh.

“Please don’t make me do this, Cloud!” Zack begs.

 _I’m sorry, Zack,_ Cloud thinks, and flicks his wrist.

“ _Wait!_ ”

He doesn’t feel the sword drive home.

* * *

Cloud floats in the Lifestream in his dreams. Aerith is there, tears running down her face, whispering apologies to him and holding his hands. She leans in and kisses his cheek and whispers something he can’t quite catch.

Then he wakes up, gasping for air, in his room above Seventh Heaven.

Jumbled memories of his time in that other world clash with his memories of here and now and he grimaces, holding his head. He’s not sure if he’d rather remember having Zack back, even if only for a moment, even as his sword, just for him to be stolen away again; but he does wonder if Zack’s love crossed worlds.

There’s a knock on his door. Cloud kicks off the blanket and nearly trips over his own feet to open it. Tifa is standing there, hands on her hips, and she squeaks as Cloud scoops her into a hug. “Oh!” she says, and laughs shyly. “Good morning to you too!”

She doesn’t know. It makes sense that she wouldn’t, and Cloud wouldn’t wish this on anyone he cared about. He’s pretty sure he has his voice back but he’s so overwhelmed he has to set her down and sign instead of speaking. <You okay?>

“I feel okay,” Tifa replies. “Should I not?”

Cloud shakes his head, and then nods. <No, everything’s fine. Sorry.>

“It’s okay.” Tifa touches his face gently. “You gonna have breakfast with us?”

A note sounds in his head, clear as a bell, pushing him towards Sector Five. <I have something to do first.>

Tifa raises an eyebrow at him but accepts his answer, and Cloud grabs his boots and his helmet before clattering downstairs and out the back door.

The bike runs out of fuel at the edges of the ruins, and Cloud just drops it and runs the rest of the way. He can hardly breathe, his body still not quite recovered from Geostigma, but he reaches the doors to the church in record time.

There’s a man standing there, staring up through the twin holes in the roof at the sky. There’s now a different reason why Cloud can’t breathe.

When he steps inside, his foot creaks against the wood. Zack turns, slow, and looks at Cloud. “Hi,” Cloud says, finally. 

“Hey,” Zack replies. And then his eyes get huge. “Cloud, you fucking—,”

“Aerith,” Cloud says. “Something about fixing the timestream. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re mad at me. Were you here the whole time?”

Zack shakes his head. “Fell out of the sky,” he admits, and his smile grows. “Gonna have to apologize to her later for squishing the flowers.”

There’s a lily tucked behind his ear. Cloud freezes when he sees it, only a foot away from him and ready to tackle him back into the flowerbed. “That’s—,”

Zack reaches up and touches it carefully. “Everything I said there was true,” he says. “True in any world.”

He closes the distance and wraps his arms around Cloud then. He’s warm and solid, heart beating firmly against Cloud’s cheek, and Cloud hugs him right back.

“It’s done, huh,” Zack says. “Finally. You took care of it all. My living legacy. Now we can just relax.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Cloud mumbles, pulling back and bringing his hands to his chest. <Zack,> he signs, right there against his heart, with Zack’s brilliant eyes watching his every move. <Thank you.>

Zack leans down and presses his lips to Cloud’s forehead, a familiar gesture. Cloud rolls his eyes and pulls Zack down the rest of the way to kiss him for real.

“Oh, I love you,” Zack says, breathlessly, when Cloud lets him up for air.

“I love you too,” Cloud says, words unfamiliar and strange on his tongue but he wants Zack to hear them. <Okay,> he signs, because even despite being silent for two days he’s still too overwhelmed to speak. <Come on. We’re gonna be late for breakfast.>

Zack laughs and takes Cloud’s hand. “Alright, hotshot,” he says. “Just like before, I’ll follow your lead.”

Cloud glances back at the church as they walk away. _Thank you_ , he whispers to Aerith. _I’ll see you soon._

Aerith giggles, a breeze ruffling against his hair. _I daresay you will,_ she whispers back. _Soon we’ll be together again. Well. Sort of._

Cloud smiles, pressing it into Zack’s shoulder. _That works for me._

**Author's Note:**

> and they go back to 7th heaven and aerith is chilling at the breakfast table because it's my fic and i say she doesn't have to stay dead either. i mean she's probably just the planet's avatar now but she still gets to see the people she loves. 
> 
> also god bless claire for writing the friends at the table transistor au that ended up with a happy ending. it is possible y'all!
> 
> my tumblr basically runs more on queue than anything else these days but the ol' twitter is locked right now so come talk to me [@citadelofswords](https://citadelofswords.tumblr.com) on tumblr i guess


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